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Title: The Book of General Ignorance
ISBN: 0307394913
Author:
John Mitchinson
John Lloyd
Publicate Date: 2007-08-07
Publish: 2007-08-07
List Price: $19.95
Average Customer Rating: 4.0
Format: Hardcover
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $10.72
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $9.90
Amazon Merchant Price: $13.57
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| Customer Review: |
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1: What a fun read
I had a good time reading this book. Not only do you find out interesting facts,but the whys and wherefores.If you like the History Channel you'll love this book.I recommend it.
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2: Don't believe everything you read
I found an error right in the first few paragraphs: the authors take the Nepali name of Mt Everest (Sagarmatha) as Tibetan, and the Tibetan name (Chomolungma) as Nepali. This is such a simple, easily verifiable fact (a quick check with Google or Wikipedia would do) that a competent fact-checker would have corrected it right away. It makes one wonder just how cavalier the authors are about facts.
Or logic for that matter. Example: the authors simply assert that "Chop Suey" was originally a local dish of Canton. Based on what? One wonders. The authors cite no evidence except that the fact the name "chop suey" was of Cantonese origin. By the same logic, "Big Mac" would have been originally a local dish of England!
This is not to say that the book is no fun. As usual: caveat lector.
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3: Quite Interesting, you know
If you know and like the British Quiz Show 'Quite Interesting' then this book is a must. General Ignorance is a regular part of this hilarious panel quiz hosted by Stephen Fry and the book puts together all the suprising information that the panellists forfeit their hard-earned points supplying a common but wrong answer.
If you don't know QI (make your cable TV get it), then it's still a well-written, informative and amusing collection of facts that are quite contrary to those ones known as General Knowledge.
If you think that Edison invented the lightbulb, Henry the VIII had six wives and the tallest mountain in the world is Mount Everest you're in the wrong.
Quick, go and read this book before somebody spots you for the bloody ignorant you're really are.
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4: FANTASTIC LITTLE KNOWN TRIVIA
TURNED ME INTO MORE OF A KNOW IT ALL THAN I WAS BEFORE,
GREAT BATHROOM READING!!
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5: Fun book, but it too shows some ignorance...
This is a thoroughly interesting and fun read. However, awash as I am in my own ignorance, I have detected a few gaffs here and there...such as the authors' claims that a star named Lucy (which allegedly has the heart of a diamond) is precisely located some billions of miles OVER Australia! Anyone with a whit of background in cosmology would recognize that since our Earth is spinning at somewhere around 1,000 mph and is at the same time zipping around the sun at 18 miles a second (give or take a few mps), and that our sun is sailing along its own trajectory, carrying its retinue of orbiting planets, and that the star Lucy is on its own separate orbit through the galaxy, the chance of Lucy being situated over a particular spot on the globe for more than an instant is very, very slim. Factor in the time delay caused by the galactic distance of light years involved and it's obvious that wherever Lucy seems to to us today, it's no longer anywhere near that spot "over Australia" in actuality. So, creeping general ignorance, like entropy, always eventually triumphs...including "expert" books on ignorance, it would seem.
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